The Forward Thrust Era (1960s-1970s)

With passage of the 1968 Forward Thrust capital improvement bond initiative by Seattle and King County voters, the emphasis on recreation yielded to acquisition of park sites and construction of facilities, particularly swimming pools. This photograph records the March 1973 opening of Auburn's Forward Thrust pool. Fran Kingsolver, Miss Auburn 1973, is dedicating the pool with water from the 1972 Munich Olympics pools, as County Council member Dave Mooney looks on.

The Park System began to assume a broader, regionalized role, acquiring large parcels of land for less-developed, passive-use parks, and for trails like the Lake Sammamish Trail, where this walker was photographed in 1994.

Surveys of park and trail sites between 1969 and 1975 resulted in an extensive body of color aerial photographs for that time period, as well as many ground photographs useful for neighborhood history research. This aerial photograph along the east Green River shows the present site of Whitney Bridge Park in September, 1970.